Hi Simon,
Simon said:
XML isn't a programming language.
Didier says:
Simon is right, XML is based on a free context grammar. I personally found
that XML is best suited to create descriptive programming languages and does
a poor job in the design of imperative languages. It seems from experience
that its best match is when a description of something like the composite
pattern is required. In fact, its best match is with anything that closely
resembles to a composite pattern structure. If we look closely, we human,
have an innate tendency to structure things in composite patterns or
hierarchical structures. Is this because of our short term memory
limitations (i.e. the Miller's magic seven principle, 1956) and our tendency
to chunk the information into small pieces? I do not know, but for sure,
hierarchies are more easily processed by our brains. And every languages but
machine language (i.e. binary) is made for us, humans beings.
I am working on a project based on prototypes (i.e. frames or self
prototypes), When we had to transfer objects from a system to another, XML
has proved to be a good model serialization match. XML was good to describe
the prototypes and their aggregations relationship. So, for sure XML is not
a universal panacea but is a good model serialization language when such
model could be described or aggregated as a hierarchy.
Cheers
Didier PH Martin
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Didier PH Martin http://didier-martin.com
OpenJade Project http://dsssl.netfolder.com
Coming soon.... http://xml.netfolder.com
Coming soon.... http://blog.didier-martin.com
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